According to the Center for Disease Control (CDC), in the years 2005 and 2006, more than one third of American adults were obese. In addition, the percentage of Americans that are overweight continues to increase. Eating disorders that can lead to individuals being extremely over or underweight have been connected to a myriad of health problems including hypertension, osteoarthritis, dysiipidemia, type 2 diabetes, coronary heart disease, stroke, gallbladder disease, sleep apnea, respiratory problems, cancers (i.e. endometrial, breast, colon, etc.), and reproductive complications.
Society as a whole also pays a price for increasing levels of obesity. For instance, in the year 2000 the estimated national cost due to obesity was 117 billion dollars. An estimated 61 billion dollars was attributed to direct costs such as preventive, diagnostic, and treatment services. In addition, an estimated 56 billion dollars was accredited to indirect costs such as value of income lost from decreased productivity, restricted activity and value of future income lost due to premature death.
Obviously, there is a need to provide individuals with additional and improved methods and devices to obtain and maintain a healthy weight. Many methods and devices have been developed over the years to promote healthy eating habits. For instance, a plurality of devices have been developed that utilize a database capable of storing information, e.g., caloric information, fat/protein/carbohydrate breakdown, etc., for a large number of food items. Such devices can be used to monitor the amount of food and calorie intake that one consumes during a given day. Examples of such devices are described in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,321,674 to Krames et al., 4,686,624 to Blum et al., 4,575,804 to Ratcliff, 4,911,256 to Attikiouzel, and PCT Patent Application No. WO 97/28738 to Zuabe. Unfortunately, such devices lack the ability to provide real time feedback to a user. Also, many of these devices require the user to enter information into a computer which takes time and effort. Most such devices are not applicable for general, everyday-use for food intake monitoring. It is a tedious effort to manually track or note in a diary every meal consumed, and manual tracking provides obvious opportunities for bias and misreporting. Moreover, devices developed for clinical or hospital or research monitoring of food intake are not applicable for everyday use by an average person.
Devices that offer real time feedback to a user have also been described. For instance, U.S. Pat. No. 5,398,688 to Laniado describes a device that can detect changes in physiological variables such as heart rate, stroke volume, and blood pressure corresponding to initiation of eating. A detected change in a physiological variable starts a timer and after a predetermined amount of time has passed the device will notify the user to stop eating.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,563,850 to Hanapole describes a device that alerts the user when it is acceptable to take another bite based upon the time interval between individual bites. The device utilizes a wrist motion detector that activates a timer upon wrist motion.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,135,950 to Adams describes a device that includes a first sensor placed on a user's throat to monitor swallowing and a second sensor that is placed near the user's heart. Feedback from the two sensors allows better quantification of the amount of food ingested.
Other sensors have been developed to monitor other bodily functions. For instance, U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2005/0245793 to Hilton, et al. describes an apparatus and methodology that may be used to measure and store physiological parameters indicative of sustained activity by a user including walking, sleeping, exercising, or other activities.
While the above describe improvements in the art, room for additional improvement exists. What is needed in the art is a noninvasive, inexpensive, easy to operate, discreet device that can measure food intake. For instance, a device that can be worn casually, and can provide a system such that feedback and recording capabilities do not embarrass the user would be of great benefit.